Customer reviews

75

Very fun little game

Aparently you can finish this game in like 5 minutes, as one achievement says. But it can go for about an hour or more, if you want to get all the cards and the items, and finish the puzzles the harder way.
It has a very fun humour and very colourfull, definitely recommend it.
I did get nauseous while playing this game, so do make sure to eat, and not spend too much time on puzzles and they might get a bit hard.

78

Great puzzle game, mix of Zelda and Sokoban

Ittle Dew is a little game that stands somewhere between Zelda and Sokoban, with a very humorous tone, and featuring friendly game design, with aspects that can be appreciated by pretty much everyone.
From casual playthroughs, so rock-hard puzzles and 15 minutes speedruns... it's got it all! It's weird, but it's very nice to see how almost every aspect of this game seems to just fit it and provide a great experience, despite its apparent simplicity!
Presentation
Undoubtedly, one of its strongest aspects, especially at first. The cartoon-y artstyle is very well done, with a pleasant color scheme, very clean, with added lighting effects modernising its look, somewhat. The highlight here for me, though, is the character design. Everyone looks unique, is a clumsy and silly way, and with their own backstory to support them. It's pretty good!
Another detail I liked is how every line moves slightly, making everything seem more alive.
The music and sound-effects didn't standout out too much for me, but fit nicely with the rest of the presentation, and it wasn't bad by any means! Just didn't seem to carry the experience, for me.
I also found the writting to be funny at times, and it just gave the game a very light-hearted and self-aware tone the whole way through. Ranging from the dialogues with your health-potion drunk companion, to the enemies' entrances and the mocking signposts spread around, everything had something to make fun of.
How's the game structured?
Very much like a Zelda game, actually. You have an island to explore, and go through several dungeons to beat it. There is also some exploration done outside the main and tutorial dungeons.
Near the beginning of the game, you'll find a shop. The shopkeeper tells you he can give you a raft to escape the island, if you get him the artifact in the castle. And off you go. He also has 3 items to sell. You'll find the gold for it in the castle. The game's puzzles revolve around these 3 items: you'll have to combine their abilities in very varied ways to solve the puzzles.
The castle has many shortcuts, that you can take by solving much harder puzzles. If you're stuck, you may as well try another way, or go buy another item. There are many different ways of making progress, too!
The castle puzzles are pretty straighforward, though, so anyone can safely play it without fearing getting frustrated.
Outside the castle, though, there are other smaller dungeon, with harder puzzles. These usually contain Cards with the game's characters. These are merely collectibles, but they're pretty charming too. The puzzles there can also hint at some mechanics you may have not learned throw the tutorial puzzles.
As a segue, when you have enough gold, you can take one of several portals spread around the castle to fast travel. When you buy an item, you'll be catapulted into another part of the island. These are the tutorial areas. Your items are all stored near the shop, and you'll have to beat the dungeon only with your newfound item. With this, you'll learn how the item works well enough, and do that through play! I think it's a nice way of doing it.
These dungeons also contain several paths and shortcuts. One important thing is that you'll never be able to leave the cave while missing important items. When you leave the dungeon, it will be sealed, but you can rest assured that you haven't missed anything important. This is also told to you after your first dungeon, in a sign post.
The placing of that was very elegant: since there are multiple paths, it's very likely that you'll miss part of the map, and become worried after leaving the dungeon. Right when you're worrying about it, the signpost clarifies it for you.
There are many places like this in the game, making tutorialisation nicely paced. Information is often delivered at the right moment!
I think that about covers it.
General Mechanics
This game has both combat and puzzles, although the focus is mainly on the puzzles. There are also some Boss Fights, most of which are more puzzle-driven than combat, although both blend rather nicely, items being multi-purposed.
The combat is very straightforward. Your basic attack attacks the tile in front of you. There are also projectiles attacks. There are several different enemies, some that attack only in front of them, some have projectiles, etc. Different enemies require different approaches. Also, they'll respawn each time you enter the room, but it's never a problem as they're easy to avoid. Some puzzles also reset, but only when the initial conditions are necessary for you to solve another puzzle in the room (or perhaps to use a shortcut).
The only problem I've had with the combat, is how the movement is a bit floaty, and there's a lack of knock-back with some enemies. The enemies often drop hearts to replenish your health, and the game is overall not punishing in the least, so it's not too big of an issue.
Lack of Punishment
That's mostly a good thing, but it sometimes holds the player's hand too much. For example, Boss fights have 3-5 phases, and there's usually a checkpoint between each. I've found that mostly unnecessary, taking the little challenge that they provided. I think boss fights should still be a threat!
On the other hand, each time you die, you'll simply reset the room, but never lose progress, or collectibles at all. That's a very welcome thing! It's always annoying to do 4-5 rooms again when you die, or lose progress over a simple miss-step.
The puzzles are basically Sokoban, with a few twists. You have 3 items: a Flaming Sword, a Freezing Wand, and a Teleporting Wand.
The sword can set bombs on fire, to explode after a few seconds. The Freezing Wand can freeze enemies and blocks (making them very slippery when you push them, and also breakable), and can also freeze a wall, making it reflective.
The Teleporting Wand can create a Green block anywhere. If you hit bombs or enemies with the projectile, they'll teleport over to that block. This is basically all you need to know.
You combine these techniques with some more subtle quirks to the tiles and timing, and you can be faced with some evil difficult puzzles.
Difficulty.
Ittle Dew sets its casual from its hardcore puzzles
Usually, to beat the game, you have some fairly easy puzzles. To collect the cards, it's a different matter (although mostly doable). There's a final dungeon with 12 puzzles however, that is really hard! At least for someone inexperienced in Sokoban. I often had to peek into a walkthrough, and was constantly surprised with a new way of combining my items.
Precision and Perfection rather than simply solving a puzzle
The problem is that some of these puzzles required extremely precise timing, with the game's controls don't provide very well, in my opinion. Also, these puzzles constantly made you restart at every wrong move. A time rewinding mechanic would be welcome, even if just on this cave. I had to restart these puzzles many times, making it a bit too frustrating. It wasn't just a puzzle to solve, it was something that heavily relied on execution, which I'm not a fan of.
Then again, these were completely optional! And the game warned you that they were hard. If you complete it, you'll get some more cards, and also Development info, which is very cool!
H.Mention: The castle can be solved with ANY combination of 2 items. I'm very impressed with this! The castle is so nicely designed that you can beat it with any combination of the two items, and the game aknowledges that with achievements. Also for cards, speed, etc.
There are many ways of playing Ittle Dew, which is why I think it's a neatly designed game. Many ways that tie together brilliantly!
Full Recommendation. Also, check Card City Nights!

87

A colorful 2D adventure!

Ittle Dew turns out to be a marvel of creativity in level design. Funny, colorful, intelligent, this title is appreciated when taken for what it really is: a game of pure reflection. This title will reveal its depth for players who want to achieve 100% the game, for others it remains nevertheless a nice game!

90

Zelda Adventuring with Zelda Puzzling taken to the next level.

With a charming graphical style that appears hand drawn like something out of a Nickelodeon cartoon this game is great to look at. When you pitch in an exploration and adventuring game play of a Zelda game but with far more puzzling to be done this game is even more addicting. It's one of the best things to happen to PC adventure gaming in recent months!

80

Great Zelda like game

This game is similar to the Zelda games that was released on the Game Boy. A 2D top view action adventure game that is also similar to Anodyne. Similar to them, players venture through the game collecting currency and buy upgrades and weapons in order to venture further to the story. Along the game, there will be puzzles that challenges the player in order to unlock certain doors to continues. There are a lot of paths to choose from as well as ways to finish the game. Players can take their time to explore the full game and later to challenge the speed by speed running it and find ways to finish the game within 15 minutes. Definitely a great game to pick up and play it through.